A study from the University of Liverpool has found that children were more likely to eat potato chips when a celebrity had endorsed them.

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FRIDAY, March 8, 2013 — Whether he's dominating a basketball game or trying to sell us McDonald's burgers, LeBron James commands our attention. Unfortunately for kids, he may also be using this talent to encourage unhealthy food decisions.

Celebrities aren’t nutritionists or doctors, even if some of them sometimes play them on TV, but kids trust celebrities’ judgment anyway — and that may be influencing youngsters to eat more junk food, say the authors of a new study in The Journal of Pediatrics.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool found that children who had seen an advertisement featuring former soccer star British Gary Lineker ate “considerably more” chips than kids in three groups who had seen different ads.

"This is the first study to show the powerful effects of celebrity endorsement - in both a TV advertising and a non-food context - on the choice and intake of the endorsed snack product over the same product offered as a non-branded snack item,” said lead researcher Emma Boyland, MSc, from the Institute of Psychology, Health and Soceity, in the press release.

The study included 181 children between the ages of 8 and 11. They were shown one of four 45-second commercials, or footage from a TV show (Match of the Day, with Gary Lineker providing sports commentary, but with no product attachment), during a 20-minute episode of The Simpsons.

One advertisement was for Walkers Crisps, a popular British brand of potato chips, and starred Lineker as a celebrity endorser. The other two advertisements were more generic – one for another snack food and one for a toy.

After watching The Simpsons, all groups of the children were given two bowls of chips. One bowl was labeled "Walkers," and the other was labeled "Supermarket," although it was also filled with Walkers chips.

The group that saw the Walkers Crisp celebrity endorsement ate more than twice as many of the Walkers-labelled chips than the Supermarket chips. The other groups also ate more Walkers chips, but the gaps were smaller. The toy advertisement group had the smallest gap (approximately 22 Walkers chips to approximately 18 Supermarket chips).

“Regulation of food advertising on TV should take into account the influence on children’s brand choices and food consumption of celebrity endorsers with a general population appeal,” the study concluded.

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